Nobody seemed to know what was the exact position M. Isidore occupied in the hotel, nor, indeed, did anybody care, as long as he was civil and made himself generally useful. Yet there was a vague feeling of mystery associated with the light-hearted youth, who in some inexplicable way commanded a certain amount of deference that excluded familiarity. His name floated continually on the surface of general conversation. It was "Ask M. Isidore this—M. Isidore will see to that," or, "Where is M. Isidore?" and the vivid face and dancing eyes were there.
He had a habit of suddenly appearing without audible summons in crises of discomfort and perplexity, when, as if by magic, things came straight, and, with a jest and a shrug, he vanished—Heaven only knew whither, for he seemed to possess neither local habitation nor surname. You never knew where to look for him, yet he was always to be found.
If donkeys from Mentone were wanted, he tapped and clicked in a little corner cupboard, and after one or two soft "Ola's!" listened as if in communion with subject spirits to whom he whispered words of power, whereupon, in no time to speak of, gaily-caparisoned but self-willed animals, in charge of women in flat straw hats, stood waiting on a little sort of bastion on the ridge, outside the gate at the back of the house.
If people wanted to know what the weather was going to be—and only newcomers asked what everybody else knew by experience to be unchangeably superb—or the menu, or the temper of riding mules, or the hire of carriages, the weight of postal packets, and the best places to buy oranges to send home, or when every train left, and arrived at, Mentone, or the probable cost of sailing to Africa, the price and programme of every entertainment at Nice, Mentone, and Monte Carlo, the most trustworthy hair-dressers and restaurants in the town, the hours of Divine worship, and the most infallible system of winning at roulette, they unhesitatingly asked M. Isidore in any language they happened to know best, and he as unhesitatingly replied in the same—namely, his own. Hence it happened that his replies often exercised and impressed the imagination as strongly as those of the Delphian oracle, and like those were subject to diverse interpretations by diverse hearers. And, if the oracles were unfulfilled, this in no wise detracted from the confidence reposed in his omniscience. For, given three different interpretations, it was obviously impossible for all to be fulfilled, and if one was fulfilled it was equally obvious that that must have been the right one. If people lost their way or fell off donkeys in the mountains, they were usually met or picked up by M. Isidore. If they wanted change, postage-stamps, picture-cards, these were invariably in his pocket. And if, as occasionally occurs in cosmopolitan boarding-houses, things became a little dull after dinner, M. Isidore would cheerfully swallow carving-knives, and make small articles of personal property change owners unseen, boil eggs in hats and turn wine into ink, and make people's flesh creep delightfully by reading their thoughts, telling their fortunes, and divining their characters. He would also play billiards in the French manner.
If Madame Bontemps, the proprietress, a tall and handsome woman, were ruffled in spirit by domestic contrarieties, inefficient service, exacting inmates, and the general tendency of things to be broken, lost, spoilt, and worn out, he could always soothe her exasperated feelings, and soften the asperities of her speech. He stood between her wrath and guilty servants; he defended her from the attacks of infuriated guests. He even teased that majestic woman, and openly made fun of her smaller vices, thereby drawing a soft suggestion of smiles about her iron mouth. Madame Bontemps never laughed, probably because she never had time. But she had a husband, who sadly needed discipline. When she had a few moments' leisure, which was seldom, she sat in a small office, and received complaints and orders, gave advice, made up accounts, drew cheques and knit stockings. Indeed, she never ceased to knit stockings, unless her busy brown fingers were otherwise employed. It was supposed that she knit stockings in bed, if she ever went to bed, which was generally doubted. She had been heard at dawn in the garden giving orders in a tongue that none but the labourers could understand, except perhaps her husband, for it was that in which she usually quarrelled with him. She was sometimes found patrolling the corridors and stairs at night, after lights were out and the hotel was ostensibly plunged in repose.
If anything—illness, fire, or burglars—happened during the night, Madame always appeared fully dressed with unruffled hair. At any hour of the day she might be seen in gardens, vineyards, and lemon orchards, directing labourers, or in the kitchen, making the chef's hair bristle with terror, or in the topmost corridors discovering the sins of trembling femmes de chambre, or in the poultry yard, cow-stall, or dairy; and wherever Madame Bontemps found things done as they should not be done, she was capable, not only of commenting in vigorous terms upon the subject, but also of practically showing how they should be done.
People going to her office and finding it empty had only to press an electric button, and she appeared as if attached to a secret spring. No one knew what Madame Bontemps did not do.
On the other hand, nobody knew what M. Bontemps did. But he was invariably polite and cheerful, and invariably provided with cigarettes and criticisms of life, for which he entertained a tolerant contempt, mixed with appreciation. He always referred to Madame with profound deference as the one supreme authority on earth. It was rumoured, but not generally credited, that he had once carried a pannier of wood up to some one's room. He had beautiful dark blue eyes, inherited by his youngest daughter. His eldest was cast in sterner mould, more like her mother. She spoke English well but not willingly; her frame was tall and powerful, her bearing majestic, her face dark and strong, with those very dark liquid eyes full of latent passion, that suggest a Moorish or Saracenic strain in the ancestry. Mlle. Geneviève, Ermengarde understood, was learning hotel management under her mother, whose able lieutenant she had already become. Some of these facts were gathered from the thin man and some from M. Isidore himself, in the course of the first, long, idle, dreamy day of basking on the sunny garden terrace.
It is probable that these things lost nothing in their transmission through Mrs. Allonby's letters home. As she lay in a long chair among spiced stocks in the still clear sunlight, she supposed herself to be writing letters. But in reality she was absorbing the beauty of the pictures spread before her, and realizing how much more exhausted she had been by her illness than had been suspected, and how unfit to cope with the trouble that had invaded her guarded, commonplace life. Only stillness and this healing warmth of sunlight seemed any good to her now. The stocks touching her feet were backed by a rustic balustrade, twined with roses and jasmine, immediately above a narrow belt of lemon-trees, the yellow-fruited tops of which were just visible, on the edge of the ridge which fell so steeply that, as she lay, there was nothing between her eyes and the distant band of dark blue sea. She seemed to be poised in mid air, with the lemons and roses, between sea and sky.
There was now no need to leave the house, the Anarchist having apparently taken his departure. With what anxiety she had listened to the voices of people breakfasting that first morning in the sunny air beneath her open window, while she took her coffee and roll cosily in bed, fearing to detect the harsh tones of the Anarchist among them. But she could only distinguish the plaintive notes of the thin man and the high treble and artificial gurgling laugh of Miss Boundrish, the daughter of the woman of ample girth, above the general cheerful ripple of morning chat. Her window being au troisième, she ventured once, modestly veiled in lace curtains, to peep out upon this amazing picture of people breakfasting out of doors at eight o'clock of a mid-winter morning, and, as every face was turned from the house to the glorious prospect of sunlit space, and most were too immediately beneath her to look up without dislocated necks, there was little fear of being seen. How pleasant it was, this intermittent sound of voices in open air. There was the thin man in a picturesque hat, breakfasting all alone on the edge of a little jutting plateau, his head outlined upon the blue space of the ravine, his face seaward. There is but one pleasanter thing than this social breakfasting out of doors—to lie in bed and hear other people do it through open windows.